August 21, 2013

(Credit: Google)

Project Loon is looking for folks in California’s Central Valley who are willing to have a Loon Internet antenna installed on their house or small business building to help test the strength of the Loon Internet balloon connection, Google has announced on Google+.

Comments (7)

I had the idea back in the ’60′s of using tethered balloons as RF reflectors. There was that satellite way back then that proved the principle, simply inflated in orbit and anyone could bounce off it. A tethered balloon could be electrically heated for lift, using just hot air, or a combo of sunlight and laser heating or simply running a power line up the tether, and a few such balloons would provide virtually unlimited bandwidth in urban areas, as well as low cost repeaters for global traffic. All at a tiny fraction of the cost of landlines or satellite. With the right positioning, and a decent self-centering telescopic pickup, people could even use the balloon to directly look down at any area in sight, zooming in on a football game, for example, (or their neighbor’s back yard) but with no rf involved, just optics and an optical amp at the receiving end to throw the image up on a screen, resolution only limited by the receiver. Couple that with a low-power laser, and people could send entire interactive VR universes to an unlimited number of recipients.

Now watch as these ideas are grabbed and patented under the ridiculous “first filer” rules… Then they will be either locked away with anyone who tries to implement being prosecuted, or will be bought up by a big Player for monopoly use… That’s how the system works nowadays, and why we don’t ever see 95% of the real innovation.

Cant there just be a new country floating in international waters just dedicated to research and putting new technologies into use? Haha, seems like a good idea to me. No patent problems or anything, just people working to make really important things happen.

Why doesn’t Google listen to geniuses like Gorden Russell before they start these wildly misguided projects!?

According to Gorden, it doesn’t even rain in California AND the east had valleys!? I, for one, wasn’t even aware of either of those facts! Obviously no one at Google is either. Why do they hire such dummies??

According to the video, this is designed to be a global project with the balloons floating above the weather-layer of the atmosphere, but clearly Gorden has proven in his post that this is simply not good enough and they just have not thought this through!!

Someone at Google PLEASE call Gorden! Your tests are too easy. He can make them much harder for you and therefore no longer stupid and pointless.

Good way to get internet connections in to countries where it has been shut down or severely restricted … 99 red balloons :-) Hmmm … might be able to use it for search and rescue too if weather cooperates.